Monopoly and competition

Monopoly and competition, basic factors in the structure of economic markets. In economics monopoly and competition signify certain complex relations among firms in an industry. A monopoly implies an exclusive possession of a market by a supplier of a product or a service for which there is no substitute. In this situation the supplier is able to determine the price of the product without fear of competition from other sources or through substitute products. It is generally assumed that a monopolist will choose a price that maximizes profits.

Competition is directly influenced by the means through which companies produce and distribute their products. Different industries have different market structures—that is, different market characteristics that determine the relations of sellers to one another, of sellers to buyers, and so forth. Aspects of market structure that underlie the competitive landscape are: (1) the degree of concentration of sellers in an industry, (2) the degree of product differentiation, and (3) the ease or difficulty with which new sellers can enter the industry.

Concentration of sellers

Seller concentration refers to the number of sellers in an industry together with their comparative shares of industry sales. When the number of sellers is quite large, and each seller’s share of the market is so small that in practice he cannot, by changing his selling price or output, perceptibly influence the market share or income of any competing seller, economists speak of atomistic competition. A more common situation is that of oligopoly, in which the number of sellers is so few that the market share of each is large enough for even a modest change in price or output by one seller to have a perceptible effect on the market shares or incomes of rival sellers and to cause them to react to the change. In a broader sense, oligopoly exists in any industry in which at least some sellers have large shares of the market, even though there may be an additional number of small sellers. When a single seller supplies the entire output of an industry, and thus can determine his selling price and output without concern for the reactions of rival sellers, a single-firm monopoly exists.

The structure of a market is also affected by the extent to which those who buy from it prefer some products to others. In some industries the products are regarded as identical by their buyers—as, for example, basic farm crops. In others the products are differentiated in some way so that various buyers prefer various products. Notably, the criterion is a subjective one; the buyers’ preferences may have little to do with tangible differences in the products but are related to advertising, brand names, and distinctive designs. The degree of product differentiation as registered in the strength of buyer preferences ranges from slight to fairly large, tending to be greatest among infrequently purchased consumer goods and “prestige goods,” particularly those purchased as gifts.

Ease of entry

Industries vary with respect to the ease with which new sellers can enter them. The barriers to entry consist of the advantages that sellers already established in an industry have over the potential entrant. Such a barrier is generally measurable by the extent to which established sellers can persistently elevate their selling prices above minimal average costs without attracting new sellers. The barriers may exist because costs for established sellers are lower than they would be for new entrants, or because the established sellers can command higher prices from buyers who prefer their products to those of potential entrants. The economics of the industry also may be such that new entrants would have to be able to command a substantial share of the market before they could operate profitably.

The effective height of these barriers varies. One may distinguish three rough degrees of difficulty in entering an industry: blockaded entry, which allows established sellers to set monopolistic prices, if they wish, without attracting entry; impeded entry, which allows established sellers to raise their selling prices above minimal average costs, but not as high as a monopolist’s price, without attracting new sellers; and easy entry, which does not permit established sellers to raise their prices at all above minimal average costs without attracting new entrants.

Market conduct and performance

It is helpful to distinguish the related ideas of market conduct and market performance. Market conduct refers to the price and other market policies pursued by sellers, in terms both of their aims and of the way in which they coordinate their decisions and make them mutually compatible. Market performance refers to the end results of these policies—the relationship of selling price to costs, the size of output, the efficiency of production, progressiveness in techniques and products, and so forth.

The arguments in favour of monopolies are largely concerned with efficiencies of scale in production. For example, proponents assert that in large-scale, integrated operations, efficiency is raised and production costs are reduced; that by avoiding wasteful competition, monopolies can rationalize activities and eliminate excess capacity; and that by providing a degree of future certainty, monopolies make possible meaningful long-term planning and rational investment and development decisions. Against these are the arguments that, because of its power over the marketplace, the monopoly is likely to exploit the consumer by restricting production and variety or by charging higher prices in order to extract excess profits; in fact, the lack of competition may eliminate incentives for efficient operations, with the result that the factors of production are not used in the most economical manner.

Market conduct and performance in atomistic industries provide standards against which to measure behaviour in other types of industry. The atomistic category includes both perfect competition (also known as pure competition) and monopolistic competition. In perfect competition, a large number of small sellers supply a homogeneous product to a common buying market. In this situation no individual seller can perceptibly influence the market price at which he sells but must accept a market price that is impersonally determined by the total supply of the product offered by all sellers and the total demand for the product of all buyers. The large number of sellers precludes the possibility of a common agreement among them, and each must therefore act independently. At any going market price, each seller tends to adjust his output to match the quantity that will yield him the largest aggregateprofit, assuming that the market price will not change as a result. But the collective effect of such adjustments by all sellers will cause the total supply in the market to change significantly, so that the market price falls or rises. Theoretically, the process will go on until a market price is reached at which the total output that sellers wish to produce is equal to the total output that all buyers wish to purchase. This way of reaching a provisional equilibrium price is what the Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith described when he wrote of prices being determined by “the invisible hand” of the market.

If the provisional equilibrium price is high enough to allow the established sellers profits in excess of a normal interest return on investment, then added sellers will be drawn to enter the industry, and supply will increase until a final equilibrium price is reached that is equal to the minimal average cost of production (including an interest return) of all sellers. Conversely, if the provisional equilibrium price is so low that established sellers incur losses, some will withdraw from the industry, causing supply to decline until the same sort of long-run equilibrium price is reached.

The long-run performance of a purely competitive industry therefore embodies these features: (1) industry output is at a feasible maximum and industry selling price at a feasible minimum; (2) all production is undertaken at minimum attainable average costs, since competition forces them down; and (3) income distribution is not influenced by the receipt of any excess profits by sellers.

This performance has often been applauded as ideal from the standpoint of general economic welfare. But the applause, for several reasons, should not be unqualified. Perfect competition is truly ideal only if all or most industries in the economy are purely competitive and if in addition there is free and easy mobility of productive factors among industries. Otherwise, the relative outputs of different industries will not be such as to maximize consumer satisfaction. There is also some question whether producers in purely competitive industries will generally earn enough to plow back some of their earnings into improved equipment and thus maintain a satisfactory rate of technological progress. Innovation would effectively be discouraged. Finally, some purely competitive industries have been afflicted with what has been called destructive competition. Examples have been seen in the coal and steel industries, some agricultural industries, and the automotive industry. For some historical reason, such an industry accumulates excess capacity to the point where sellers suffer chronic losses, and the situation is not corrected by the exit of people and resources from the industry. The invisible hand of the market works too slowly for society to accept. In some cases, notably in agriculture, government has intervened to restrict supply or raise prices. Leaving these qualifications aside, however, the market performance of perfect competition furnishes some sort of a standard to which the performance of industries of different structure may be compared.

In the more complex situation of monopolistic competition (atomistic structure with product differentiation), market conduct and performance may be said to follow roughly the tendencies attributed to perfect competition. The principal differences are the following. First, individual sellers, because of the differentiation of their products, are able to raise or lower their individual selling prices slightly; they cannot do so by very much, however, because they remain strongly subject to the impersonal forces of the market operating through the general level of prices. Second, rivalry among sellers is likely to involve sales-promotion costs as well as the expense of altering products to appeal to buyers. This is a competitive game that all will play but that nobody, on average, will win, and the long-run equilibrium price will reflect the added costs involved. In return, however, buyers will get more variety. Third, since sellers are unlikely to be equally successful in their sales-promotion and product policies, some will receive profits in excess of a basic interest return on their investment; such profits will come from their success in winning buyers. Monopolistic competition may, like perfect competition, include industries that are afflicted with destructive competition. This may result not only from a failure to get rid of excess capacity but also from the entry of too many new firms despite the danger of losses.

Monopoly

While single-firm monopolies are rare, except for those subject to public regulation, it is useful to examine the monopolist’s market conduct and performance to establish a standard at the pole opposite that of perfect competition. As the sole supplier of a distinctive product, the monopolistic company can set any selling price, provided it accepts the sales that correspond to that price. Market demand is generally inversely related to price, and the monopolist presumably will set a price that produces the greatest profits, given the relationship of production costs to output. By restricting output, the firm can raise its selling price significantly—an option not open to sellers in atomistic industries.

The monopolist will generally charge prices well in excess of production costs and reap profits well above a normal interest return on investment. His output will be substantially smaller, and his price higher, than if he had to meet established market prices as in perfect competition. The monopolist may or may not produce at minimal average cost, depending on his cost-output relationship; if he does not, there are no market pressures to force him to do so.

If the monopolist is subject to no threat of entry by a competitor, he will presumably set a selling price that maximizes profits for the industry he monopolizes. If he faces only impeded entry, he may elect to charge a price sufficiently low to discourage entry but above a competitive price—if this will maximize his long-run profits.

Market conduct and performance in oligopolistic industries generally combine monopolistic and competitive tendencies, with the relative strength of the two tendencies depending roughly on the detailed market structure of the oligopoly.

Rivalry among sellers

In the simplest form of oligopolistic industry, sellers are few, and every seller supplies a sufficiently large share of the market so that any feasible and modest change in his policies will appreciably affect the market shares of all his rival sellers, inducing them to react or respond. For example, if seller A reduces his selling price sufficiently below the general level of prices being charged by all sellers to permit him to capture significant numbers of customers from his rivals if they hold their selling prices unchanged, they may react by reducing their prices by a similar amount, so that none gains at the expense of others and the group’s combined profits are probably reduced. Or, seller A’s rivals may retaliate by reducing their selling prices more than he did, thus forcing a further reaction from him. Conversely, if seller A increases his selling price above the general level being charged by all sellers (thus tending to lose at least some of his customers to his rivals), they may react by holding their prices unchanged, in which event seller A will probably retract his increase and bring his price back to the previous level. But his rivals may also react by raising their prices as much as seller A raised his, in which case the general level of prices in the industry rises and the combined profits of all sellers are probably increased.

Any seller A in an oligopoly will therefore determine whether or not to alter his price or other market policy in the light of his conjectures about the reactions of his rivals. Correspondingly, his rivals will determine their reactions in the light of their conjectures about what seller A will do in response. The process is not likely to bring the industry price level down to minimal average cost as in atomistic competition. Many different “equilibrium” levels between the competitive and monopolistic limits are possible, depending on further circumstances.

Thus, in an oligopoly viable collusive agreements among rival sellers are quite possible. They may be express agreements established by contract or tacit understandings that develop as a pattern of reactions among sellers to changes in each others’ prices or market policies becomes customary. In the United States, express collusive agreements are forbidden by law, but tacit agreements, or “gentlemen’s understandings,” are common in oligopolistic industries. Such implicit agreements, however, can be upset by many factors, including declines in demand or improvements in technology that allow firms to cut costs while still earning profits.

In numerous other Western countries, formal collusive agreements (often called cartels if comprehensive in scope) are legal. Whether tacit or explicit, legal or illegal, one may say that oligopolistic prices tend to be “administered” by sellers, in the senses mentioned above, as distinct from being determined by impersonal market forces.

Sellers’ dual aims

The varying market performance of oligopolies results from the fact that individual sellers intrinsically have two conflicting aims. One common desire is to establish among themselves a monopolistic level of price (and of selling costs, etc.), which will maximize their combined profits, giving them the largest “profit pie” to divide. But each seller also has a fundamental antagonism toward rival sellers and wants to maximize his or her own profits even at the expense of others. The relative strengths of these conflicting aims is likely to depend on how concentrated the oligopoly is, because when sellers are fewer and their individual market shares larger, their rivals’ reactions are stronger deterrents to independent actions.

This is why various sorts of market performance are to be expected in oligopolistic industries. When the entry of other sellers is blockaded, collusive or interdependent behaviour may lead to a full monopoly price. If entry is only impeded, the resulting price may be far enough below the full monopoly level to discourage further entry. But prices are not always what they seem. An announced price that is well above cost may be undercut by clandestine price reductions to individual buyers, bringing the average of actual selling prices down somewhat. If an oligopolistic industry is made up of a “core” of a few large interdependent sellers plus a “competitive fringe” of several or numerous quite small sellers, the competition of the small sellers may induce the large ones to limit the extent to which they raise their prices.

Price behaviour approaching full monopoly pricing seems to be found mainly in oligopolies having very high seller concentration and blockaded entry. Where these characteristics are less pronounced, prices and profits tend to be lower, though they are likely to be somewhat above the competitive level. A few economists maintain that oligopolistic prices in general do not significantly differ from atomistically competitive prices, but the bulk of statistical evidence does not support them.

In oligopolies in which product differentiation is important, sales-promotion costs and the costs of product improvement or development will display roughly the same variety of tendencies found in pricing. Where there are a few large interdependent sellers, these costs may be restricted to about the same level as those of a single-firm monopolist; on the other hand, rivalry in sales promotion and product development may be sufficient to raise them. Oligopolists may also arrive collusively at relatively high uniform selling prices but simultaneously engage in independent nonprice competition (perhaps more so where seller concentration is lower).

Definition and attributes

Since the market performance of industries varies along with their market characteristics, efforts have been made to devise some practical standard for identifying the sorts of market structure that engender socially satisfactory performance in a given industry. The term workable competition was coined to denote competition that may be considered as leading to a reasonable or socially acceptable approximation of ideal performance in the circumstances of a particular industry. The limits of such an approximation are of course debatable, and so the idea of workable competition must remain elusive because it is basically subjective.

Without entering into a complex theoretical discussion of the relationship between individual industry performance and overall welfare, it is plausible to suggest the following principal attributes of workable performance in an industry: (1) In the long term, selling price on average should be equal to or not significantly above average costs of production, so that profits do not appreciably exceed a normal interest return on investment. Prices should be responsive to basic reductions in costs. (2) Insofar as average costs of production are affected by the scales or capacities of plants and firms, the preponderance of industry output should be from plants and firms of the most efficient scale or with closely comparable technical efficiency. (3) The industry should not have chronic excess capacity—i.e., significant plant capacity that is persistently unused even in periods of high general economic activity. (4) The industry’s sales-promotion costs should not be substantially greater than what is needed to keep buyers informed of the availability, characteristics, and prices of products. (5) The industry should be adequately progressive in introducing more economical production techniques and improved products, thereby balancing the costs of progress with the gains.

While the first three of these attributes are easier to appraise than the others, certain generalizations are possible concerning the workability of different market structures: (1) Unregulated single-firm monopolies tend to generate unworkable market performance, mainly in the form of output restriction, prices well above costs, and consequent excess profits. They have undesirable effects on the uses to which resources are put and on income distribution. (2) Oligopolies with high seller concentration and also very high barriers to entry tend toward unworkable performance, like that of single-firm monopoly. In general, however, they do not show significant degrees of technical inefficiency resulting from inefficient plant scales or excess capacity. (3) Oligopolies with fairly high seller concentration but only moderate barriers to entry are also prone to unworkable performance of the sort just mentioned, but not to as high a degree. (4) Oligopolies with only moderate seller concentration and moderate-to-low barriers to entry tend toward workable performance both in price-cost relations and in technical efficiency, except that some of them may have recurrent chronic excess capacity due to periodic overentry by competing firms. (If cartels are legalized and their provisions are not rigorously controlled by government, the last two categories of oligopoly may have the same sort of unworkable performance as do very highly concentrated oligopolies.) (5) Industries of atomistic structure tend generally toward workable performance unless they suffer from destructive competition as described above.

In industries with significant differentiation of products among sellers—and especially in oligopolies of this sort—there is a tendency for minor but significant fractions of income to be devoted to persuasive (as distinct from informational) advertising and other sales promotion and also to more or less idle variations of product design, with the result that resources are in a sense “wasted” and costs increased.

By the criteria of workable competition, a purely rational society would presumably favour industries with moderate to low seller concentration and moderate to low barriers to entry and without extreme product differentiation—all this from the standpoint of enhancing overall material welfare. The argument that oligopolistic and atomistic industries generally need legal protection from destructive competition may be discarded on the basis of evidence. Price and other market warfare in such industries has been extremely rare in industrial countries.